Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee for governor, pledged to stop the “assault” on parental freedoms such as home-schooling at a Moms for Liberty rally at Liberty State Park in Jersey City this morning.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
Alexandra Bougher, the chair for Moms for Liberty Bergen County, began by asking for a moment of silence for the two children killed and 17 victims injured at a Minneapolis catholic school shooting yesterday.
“We’re here today because parental rights are being trampled on. They’re being trampled on every single day, whether it’s the curriculum that the New Jersey state [DOE] has picked for us, whether it’s by the senseless vaccine mandates that they put on parents every single day, and we’re here to say we’re not gonna stand for it any more,” she asserted.
“They’re also going after the home schoolers. The home school rights have always been kind of a great thing about New Jersey. ‘You want to home school, come to New Jersey,’ it was one of the most free states to home school in. Well that’s changing now, they are coming after us.”
Bougher, who made headlines about two weeks ago for saying that the Girls Scouts removed her for not bringing her troop to LGBTQ+ events during Pride Month, said that the state is trying to have an annual “wellness check” on all home schooled students.
She added that many parents are not enrolling their students into public schools in New Jersey because of the “woke ideology” promoted in many classrooms.
Ciattarelli, who is looking to defeat Democratic gubernatorial nominee U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11) on November 4th, said that Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) administration has failed parents in this regard and that he would right the ship if elected.
“Over the last eight years, parental rights have been under assault here in New Jersey. This is why we have elections. It all ends come January 2026 when we win this election,” he said to applause from the roughly 50 people in attendance.
He also blasted Policy 5756, which recommends that school districts prohibit personnel from notifying parents about a student’s gender identity, as “immoral,” “indecent,” “wrong,” and “dangerous” before continuing on about home-schooling.
“There are numerous bills in our state legislature make it almost impossible to homeschool your child and implement a curriculum if the home-schooling is approved, which are the very reasons why the parents pull the children out of the public school system to begin with,” the former state assemblyman declared.
“What amazes me about this is we have number of school districts all across the state, where up to 80 percent of eighth graders are not on grade level for reading, writing and math, but we don’t see legislation to improve that. But yet now we’ll have an assault on the 160,000 parents and guardians that home school more than 80,000 children all across the state.”
He also pledged to have an attorney general and commissioner of education that respects parental rights, as well as establishing a parental Bill of Rights, if elected to the state’s highest office this fall.
Civil rights attorney Dana Wefer, a former Hoboken Housing Authority board chair who now lives in Bergen County, explained why home-schooling has become popular in recent memory.
” … Many parents wish to protect their children from confusing and harmful ideologies, such as the belief that children can be born into the wrong body, something that children are taught by law in New Jersey. If a child starts to believe that they’re born in the wrong body in a New Jersey, school workers in the school will help the children present as the opposite sex and hide that fact from their parents,” she stated.
“Parents want their children to love themselves as they are. They don’t want their children to adopt a belief system that leads them down a path of lifelong medicalization, cross sex hormones, double mastectomies and an obsession with making the body match an internal feeling.”
She also went into detail on what is happening at the legislative level and what the implications are.
“Current bills introduced to the legislature seek to force parents to present their children annually to government counselors, social workers or nurses for ‘wellness evaluation,’ and to have the child undergo an evaluation by a qualified evaluator to report to the government whether the child is getting what the government considers to be a proper education, inclusive of all New Jersey standards, including the ideologies that many parents are explicitly opting out of by removing their children from public schools,” Wefer noted.
“Under one bill, parents would have to disclose to the government what reading materials they use to educate their children. These bills would place the government directly into the home and private spheres of the family solely because the parents have chosen to educate their children themselves.”
A few elected officials also spoke in support of the Moms for Liberty-run rally, including state Senator Michael Testa (R-1), Assemblyman Paul Kinatra (R-10), and Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R-24).
“The government believes that they are in a better position to not only parent your children, but to educate your children. Enough is enough,” said Testa, before stressing the importance of electing Ciattarelli in November.
Others in attendance included Hudson County Sheriff Frank Schillari, Hudson County GOP Vice Chair Joe Branco, GOP 9th District congressional candidate Billy Prempeh, and GOP state Assembly nominee for the 37th Legislative District Marco Navarro, among many others.
Sherrill for governor spokesman Sean Higgins said this event highlighted Ciattarelli’s loyalty to President Donald Trump (R), who has endorsed him, and little else.
“As Mikie Sherrill is visiting small businesses across the state today to discuss her Save You Time and Money Agenda, Jack Ciattarelli is rallying with MAGA extremists and at Trump National Golf Club,” he told HCV.
“It’s no surprise, but rather a pattern — Jack headlined a Stop the Steal Rally and hangs out with MAGA extremists and January 6 rioters. That tells you everything you need to know about this race: Mikie is for New Jersey, and Jack is for Trump.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated with a comment from Mikie Sherrill for governor spokesman Sean Higgins.
Pandering to the Culture War nutjobs. It’s a GOP tradition.
Selling nothing but wacko-doodle anti-American, Leftist garbage.
This while Mikie Sherill voted for every destructive Biden action against Americans with massive inflation and an invasion at the southern border.
Now nothing but deflection as undermining New Jersey energy independence has led to soaring electric bills adding to the cost of living for the state’s residents.
What craven, empty people these Sherill people are.
Biden won in 2020 because he took the Pandemic far more seriously than Trump. All you anti-Vax’ers follow your RFK Jr. Pied Piper at your own peril. Ciaterelli’s embrace of the red-herring ‘stop the steal’ tells us exactly why he ( and Trump) can never be trusted. Mother’s and Fathers who don’t embrace SCIENCE should NEVER be allowed to home school their children. Lastly, the “ thoughts and prayers“GARBAGE from this spokeswoman after ANOTHER SENSELESS MASS SHOOTING, instead of standing up for “ a well-regulated militia” (read the ENTIRE 2nd Amendment) shows her crass insensitivity and gross hypocrisy about protecting children from GUN VIOLENCE.
The “informed” think the maiming/murderous mRNA is a vaccine.
It never was.
Go get another “booster” and enjoy the health hazards of that failed injection that did not prevent infection or stop transmission. Plenty of people are dead and injured. So enjoy and continue to be brainwashed and uninformed.
Add turbo cancers to to the latest harms of the mRNA, and sadly children:
https://x.com/i/trending/1962400682516119947
So you cite an AI generated “ summary of posts on Instagram “ without citing SPECIFIC documentation, how pathetic of you.
To be so devoid of knowledge, studies and science you have to resort to stupid deflection claiming a large Italian study is an “AI generated summaries of Instagram.”
You don’t even know how to read something that isn’t on Instagram. Obviously scientific studies showing the harms and risks of the deadly, maiming mRNA wouldn’t even appear on censored websites paid by Big Phamra.
The turbo cancers afflicting people of all ages from the mRNA is a global issue and certainly is not about your lack of reading comprehension.
Here’s another study you won’t read but may waste people’s time claiming it never happened. Go get a booster then and enjoy your anti-science posture.
https://x.com/P_McCulloughMD/status/1948883903672115322
I don’t know what science you follow, but it is not real, and it is not science. In that tripe you posted about “ a large Italian study” you failed to read or acknowledge the entire post on X that you linked here: “THIS STORY IS A SUMMARY OF POSTS ON X AND MAY EVOLVE OVER TIME. GROK CAN MAKE MISTAKES, VERIFY ITS OUTPUTS” Grok is an AI assistant on X.